WEIRD WEATHER AND DISTRUCTIVE BUGS

WEIRD WEATHER AND DISTRUCTIVE BUGS

 

One thing that is consistent about late March and early April weather in the northeast is its inconsistency.  Snow is common.  It is usually a wet, sloppy, and not a whole lot of fun snow.  It is often gone in a day.  For some reason, in the spring it will snow even when the temperature on the ground is above freezing.

It can also get really warm.

The warmest I remember was Easter Sunday 1972.  It was April 2, and the temperature rose to above 90 degrees, and this was before global warming. 

On this Easter, my wife and our one year old daughter visited my folks in Maryland.  We returned home to a not so wonderful surprise.  It was hot, but the heat was not the problem, well indirectly I guess it was.  Inside, our home  was crawling with little flying bugs.  They were on the ceiling, they were on the walls.  They were trying to get out. 

Termites!

This was our first house, we had moved in maybe six months earlier.  In the 1970’s termite inspection was not required on the sale of a home.  If it had been, the inspector would have seen hundreds of mud tunnels that came from the outside, ran under the shingles, and were all over and inside the cement crawl space.

We vacuumed the crawling termites up over and over; they kept coming from the crawl space for an hour.  My wife was quite a trooper and though she was upset, she remained relatively calm.  

The scariest thing was in a powder room on the lower level of this split level home.  There was a termite mud tunnel heading straight up in the air.  It was heading for the toilet which had a wooden seat.  I’m sure this was a coincidence, if not it is pretty scary how persistent these critters can be.

We called an exterminator, and the house was treated for about $300, cheap by today’s standards, a monthly mortgage payment at the time.  As we were living paycheck to paycheck it was rather painful.

The bad news was the termites were in the house structure.  The good news was these “Jersey” termites swarm every two years, and two years is not long enough for them to do any serious structural damage.  The other good news was that the $300 treatment would kill them all.

I did learn a lot for my $300.  I learned that there are termites all over New Jersey.  If you drive a wooden stake in the ground anywhere in New Jersey, termites will find it. I learned they require moisture and must have contact with the ground, which is why they build tunnels.  Sunlight will kill termites.  They swarm on the first warm day of spring with the intent to form new colonies.  Almost all will die before they find suitable soil and wood for sustenance.

The best way to keep termites out of the house is to not allow any wood to be in contact with soil.  Then you should periodically check for mud tunnels outside on your concrete or stone foundation.  The termites will build these mud tunnels to reach the wood in a structure.

It is a plus that in New Jersey; you can no longer sell a house without an exterminator certifying the dwelling is clear of termites or carpenter ants. 

The negative I have found is exterminators will ALWAYS find signs of infestation.  If they so much as see a carpenter ant on the property, or a hunk of termite ridden wood in the yard, they will claim infestation and treat the house for a sizable sum.

There is not a yard in New Jersey that does not at least have a carpenter ant or two crawling around.

 

SODA BREAD

SODA BREAD

 

Saint Patrick’s Day and an Uncle Skip post made me think of soda bread or I guess more specifically Irish soda bread.

http://lionskip.blogspot.com/2015/03/really.html

Irish cuisine is not among the best in the world.  Don’t get upset all you Mc’s and O’s, the Irish are wonderful people.  They are wonderful entertainers, poets, story tellers, leaders, and public servants.  They may not be the world’s best chefs.   

When it comes to food, you have to do with what you’ve got.  Ireland was not blessed with wonderful herbs and spices like Asia and Italy.  It does not have wonderful cheeses and wines like France.  Ireland had a lot of potatoes. 

The Irish don’t fry much, they don’t broil much, and they don’t BBQ.  The Irish boil.  They boil until the food has no flavor.  That may be why they enjoy a bit of the drink from time to time.

Perhaps this is also why there are few fine dining restaurants serving Irish style food.  Don’t get me wrong they are King of pub grub, and I do enjoy boiled corned beef, cabbage and potatoes…especially with a nice glass of beer. 

The food from Ireland I enjoy the most is soda bread.

My ex-wives both had a wonderful recipe for soda bread.  Dry, but just enough moisture to hold it together, lovely special flavor, texture, and raisins, smothered with butter…Yum friggin um!

I don’t miss my ex-wives; I do miss their soda bread.

Apparently Irish soda bread was a bit of a secret for some time in this country.  I know when I would bring in a fresh baked loaf to work, most everyone had not heard of soda bread.  Everyone did love it.

One year I had to do without my soda bread. 

Apparently the country caught on to this treat, especially for Saint Patrick’s Day; everyone that is, except grocery stores.  My wife ordered me to go to the store for buttermilk, a prime ingredient to Irish soda bread.  She instructed me to go out and buy this buttermilk on March 16.  I had heard of buttermilk, I had never tasted it and until that day I had no idea who the hell ever bought the stuff.  People who make soda bread buy it.  They especially buy it around St. Pat’s day when they cook their traditional soda bread.

I went to five different supermarkets looking for buttermilk.  At every store I was told they had sold out before noon.  Without buttermilk there could be no soda bread.

Grocery stores learn supply and demand pretty fast.  I suspect they now order an extra supply of buttermilk before Saint Patrick’s Day.  Still, if I want soda bread, I will buy the buttermilk early.

Then again, Mrs. Cranky is only half Irish, and that half does not do soda bread.   

BASEBALL CARDS - a cranky re-run

BASEBALL CARDS

SUPPLY AND DEMAND

This cranky re-run is from September 2013

This re-run was inspired by a Suldog re-run http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-green-sox.html    You should all read it, it will bring back memories for a lot of you guys and for the ladies it might give you some insight into what goes on in the fertile mind of a nine year old boy, and by fertile I mean full of...you know.

Did you read it?  Good isn't it.  This is my take on the same subject.

BASEBALL CARDS

Growing up in the fifties, there was one economic law that every young boy knew only too well; the law of supply and demand.  That economic rule was hammered home very clearly to every boy that collected baseball cards.

In the fifties you could not just go to the store and buy a complete set of every baseball card Topps made for the year, you bought your cards in packs of five.  A pack of cards cost five cents.  Each pack had five cards and a flat piece of bubble gum.  Sometimes we actually chewed the gum, but it was not nearly as good as the roll of six pieces of bazooka you got for a nickel.

Opening the pack to see what cards you got was always exciting.  I lived in Long Island, New York.  If you got a card of any player from any of the three New York Teams, it was a big deal.  I’m guessing that if you lived in St. Louis, New York players were a dime a dozen.  In New York they were rare. 

The rarest yet were the big three, center-fielders Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, and Duke Snider.  We gambled for baseball cards by flipping them, first heads up wins, or flinging them against a wall, closest wins.  No one ever used one of the NY center-fielders in a flip or wall game.

We used baseball cards in our bikes to simulate a motor sound.  A clothes pin held the card into the spokes, and the resulting snapping sound was considered very cool.  No one used Mickey, Willie or the Duke in their spokes.

We also traded cards in an attempt to get a full set, or at least get all the players from your favorite team.  Unless you somehow had duplicates of  Mickey, Willie, or the Duke, you would never trade them.  If you had duplicates, they would fetch many cards in trade.

Mickey, Willie and the Duke were in very short supply and the demand was unlimited.  Some cards of other players seemed to be in almost every pack and had zero value except for flipping or jamming in your bicycle spokes.

Two players stick out in my mind.  Virgil “Fire” Trucks was a very successful pitcher.  In 1952 he became only the third pitcher to ever pitch two no-hitters in one season…and yet…Virgil seemed to be in almost every pack.  Bobby Shantz was a left handed pitcher who was the National League MVP in 1952 and yet in 1955 his card was a rare as a blade of grass.

One thing about the law of supply and demand, it made it a thrill when-ever you opened a pack and found one of the rare cards.  It made it exciting every time you tore open a nickel pack with the great anticipation of finding a player with an interlocking NY or a Brooklyn B on their cap.

It is little wonder that cards from the fifties and before can be worth thousands of dollars today.  Many were rare, and they had to survive bicycle spokes, flipping, bends, folds, rubber band dents, and mothers who threw them away to make space while you went off to college.

Kids today get all the cards of all the players of all the teams in one big purchase. 

“Happy Birthday son…baseball cards!  Don’t use them, don’t touch them, file them away in plastic covers.  In thirty years they will be worth a fortune!”

No they won’t dad.  Everyone has them.  You just buy them.  

Simple and easy just like lots of stuff today and everyone saves them untouched and pristine so someday they will be valuable.  But they won’t be valuable because they are in easy supply and the demand will be small.

Demand will be small because today’s young boys will have no pleasant memories of playing with those cards.   

They will never have experienced the thrill of getting lucky enough to find in that little nickel pack a Mickey, a Willie, or a Duke.

It is simple Economics 101; it is the Law of Supply and Demand.